Canelo with a lot to prove against Lara

By Boxing News - 05/08/2014 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC light middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (43-1-1, 31 KO’s) says he’s giving boxing fans the fight they wanted against Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12 KO’s) on July 12th, but it took a ton of pressure from Lara to finally get the 23-year-old Canelo to give him the fight. Canelo was exposed by Floyd Mayweather Jr. last September, and the fight showed that Canelo isn’t what a lot of boxing fans thought he was. While Golden Boy Promotions was able to bolster Canelo’s name by feeding Alfredo Angulo to him last March, there are still a lot of questions about whether Canelo is the future of boxing or just another over-hyped fighter.

Canelo has been facing guys like Matthew Hatton, Ryan Rhodes, Alfredo Angulo, Austin Trout, Shane Mosley, and Alfonso Gomez instead of taking the fight that he needed to against Lara. It’s good that the fight is finally happening, but it’s disappointing that it took Canelo so long to get around to giving the fight to Lara.

The fight will be staged at 155 instead of 154, at Canelo’s asking. Canelo fought Alfredo Angulo at 155 as well, and it’s kind of peculiar that it’s the second consecutive fight in which Canelo isn’t fighting at junior middleweight. On Monday, Canelo said he has no problem making the junior middleweight weight limit, but yet he’s choosing to fight at 155. It makes you wonder if Canelo has outgrown the weight class. Lara seems to thinks so. He told Fighthype “I don’t think I’m shocked at all. Obviously, Canelo can’t make the weight no more.”

Canelo re-hydrated to 175lbs for his last fight against Angulo in March, and then last year, Canelo re-hydrated to 172 for his fight against Austin Trout. So he gained back 20 pounds of water weight for the Angulo fight and 18 pounds the Trout fight. I think you can make a good argument that Canelo is a middleweight at least, possibly a super middleweight, fighting in the junior middleweight division. The fact that he’s able to lose that much weight and put it back on without hurting his body or putting his life in danger is a testament to his youth. He’s still young, but as he gets older, it’s going to be increasingly more difficult for Canelo to lose 20+ pounds to fight in the junior middleweight division.

Lara will have a chance to take advantage of Canelo due to him taking off and putting on so much weight for the weigh-in, and we could very well see Lara having too much speed and movement for Canelo in this fight.



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